The Price We Pay
by silvermisery
Summary: To save her Harry, she'll do anything, say anything. Give up anything. Even Draco. Dramione Oneshot.


Disclaimer: Me no own, you no sue.

The Price We Pay

He watched as she pored endlessly over her piles of books in the library, dusty darkness lit only by a single candle. Madam Pince was long gone now, hit by a random Killing Curse in one of the many battles that had racked Hogwarts and the grounds surrounding it, and they were left free to wander or desecrate the library as they pleased. _She _never befouled a book, of course. She loved them too much. Instead, she read unceasingly in the library, barely sleeping, barely waking.

"'Mione, love, you have to come to bed," he said finally.

"Mmhm," she said without lifting her head from the enormous tome that was currently under her inspection.

"You're looking peaky," he tried again. "Soon even Pansy will be fatter than you." He was hoping that this mention of her nemesis would rouse her, but she only nodded and continued flipping pages.

"Hermione!" he shouted suddenly, and startled, her head flew up and her wand emerged as if by magic from her robes. Her wand went down when she saw there was no one but him, and with a scowl her head began to follow the same path, but he stopped her, cupping her chin in his hands.

"Hermione, I mean it. You're not getting enough sleep. Look at yourself!"

His eyes raked her as though she were one of those books which she herself was perusing. Her skin was chalky white, even paler than his own, with a sort of sickly tinge to it that made her look like a plant stunted in some dark cellar. His hand against her chin, white against white. His white the white of a night-dweller, a cave-liver, someone who was meant to be pale and dark, her white the white of a sick person, a dying girl, someone who was meant to golden and lively and happy.

Her hair was limp, strands falling everywhere. When was the last time she had washed her hair, torn herself enough away from her research? He couldn't remember. She was so frail, skinnier even than Pansy, who everyone except herself knew was anorexic, as though she would break at the slightest touch, yet he knew how strong she was. She had slapped him in third-year after all.

He stared at her, this dead, dying imitation of that ebullient girl, and his heart twisted. He'd rather have that Hermione back, glaring at him and insulting him but whole and well rather than this, this ghost who smiled at him sometimes when she could spare the damn time.

He was her boyfriend, wasn't he? Her fiancé? She had promised.

_"I'll love you forever, Draco," smiling, looking up in his eyes, knowing how insecure he was behind his façade, his mask. "I'll never leave you, never stop loving you. This is a promise. Do you understand? Whatever happens, I'm always gonna be there for you."_

What had happened to that? The whispered trysts, the secret snogs, the flushed love-making in broom closets and abandoned corridors? The passionate, intense love that had flared up between them making them blind to all else? The way they looked at each other as though they were the center of the universe.

_"It's all about us," she had said to him once after caught and scolded by McGonagall. She had told them about the dangers of war and how heedless and thoughtless it was of them to just go off like that. They had nodded all throughout the lecture—far be it from Hermione, the goody-goody, to defy a teacher!—but once they left, she had wrapped her arms around him and said seriously, "It's all about us."_

That feeling of joy that Hermione, the sensible one, Hermione the rule-freak, Hermione the one who always thought like adults, hadn't cared about anything or anyone but him, him, Draco Malfoy, had been so wonderful…better than flying.

But now she was gone, and instead here was this automaton who ate when he commanded her too, who slept only when she could no longer keep her eyes open, who sometimes went for days on end without getting up from that accursed desk.

She only glanced at herself in the mirror he held up and shrugged. "So what? I've been worse." And that was what tugged at him so. It was true. She had been worse. And the fact that she didn't care what she had become—he remembered a girl who had worked for hours to tame her unruly hair so that he would be surprised, be pleased, think she was beautiful. What had happened? _What had happened? _

"Hermione, please," and now he was begging, Draco Malfoy, Ice King, Prince of All Slytherin, Heir to the Malfoy name, was begging, he was pleading with her. "Can't you see what you're doing to yourself? Damn it all Hermione, you're supposed to be the sensible one! You're killing yourself!"

"I have to find it," she said desperately. "I have to find a way."

"You can do it later! Others can help! You're not the only one who can do it, you idiot! Can't you see all you're doing is destroying yourself?"

"Harry will die if I don't find a way," she said dully.

His heart gave a dull pang as she said those words. _And don't I matter, _he wanted to yell at her, shake her until she got some sense into that beautiful head of hers. _What about me? Do you even care if I die? Would you cry, or would you just go back to those damned books? Doesn't it matter that you're slipping away from me? That I hurt? That you're ignoring me like the only thing in your universe is that research?_

He ignored it and worked on the line he knew would convince her. "You're not doing Potter any good if you die," he said brusquely. "He'll just fall apart."

She looked at him, and he knew she was giving in, like she always did when he used this line.

But this time, he exploded.

"IS THAT WHAT IT TAKES TO GET YOU AWAY FROM THOSE DAMN BOOKS?" he yelled, his famous Malfoy temper rising. "THAT POTTER WILL FALL APART IF YOU DIE? WHAT ABOUT ME? _WHAT ABOUT ME?_" then quietly, his voice dropping, "don't you care about me anymore?"

She laughed, a dry brittle laugh that was nothing like the wonderful laughs she had laughed before. "Of course, don't be silly, but I really do need to find something, I thought that last book had something about Horcruxes—"

"HORCRUXES BE DAMNED!" he yelled in an uncontrollable frenzy. "TONKS HAS WORK TO DO, BUT SHE DOESN'T IGNORE LUPIN ALL DAY! THE WEASELETTE STILL LOVES POTTER EVEN THOUGH SHE'S BUSY! HELL, EVEN MRS. WEASLEY STILL HUGS MR. WEASLEY GOODNIGHT! IT'S JUST YOU THAT THINKS SHE HAS TO PUSH EVERYONE, EVEN HER OWN FIANCE AWAY! It's just you," he repeated.

She looked at him, seeing he was for real, that he really meant it.

"You don't understand Draco, Harry will _die _if I leave this too long," she repeated.

"And what if I die?" he asked, so softly that she could barely hear it. "Would you care?"

"Of course I would!" she said.

"Would you?" he asked again, and she saw those beautiful silver eyes clouded with doubt.

"Of course," she said, trying to convince both of them at once, and knowing that it wasn't working.

He looked away.

Always, it was Potter.

Potter who beat him at Quidditch. Potter who beat him at Potions, the once class he truly loved.. Potter who Dumbledore favored. Potter who everyone wanted to know. Potter who everyone loved. Potter who beat him at everything and anything.

And this time, Potter who was taking away his girlfriend.

"I love you," he said softly.

"Draco?" her voice was tentative, unsure, frightened.

He dropped her chin and stepped away.

"Here," he whispered, and handed her the ring they had bought together one day in Diagon Alley.

She took the silver thing numbly. The ring glinted in the candlelight.

She didn't need to ask what he was doing. They knew each other so well—had known.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, but whether he was apologizing to her or himself she didn't know.

Time whirled past her ears in a sort of gasping vortex and the air was sucked out of her as it rushed pashed her, pulled at her, millions of tiny eddies grasping at her and whirling her a million different ways as it tore her apart and put her back together with some of the pieces missing, gone, lost, forever attached to the one she loved. Had loved.

He looks at her with the tears that refuse to come, because he is a Malfoy and Malfoys don't cry. He searches her face for any sign of regret, of loss, but finds none and he knows she had stopped loving him a long while ago.

It was only that neither of them realized it.

He steps away, into the dark which was always a part of him and always would be, letting it claim him as he had always known it would when all promises were broken and all hope faded, letting him be the creature of darkness, of loneliness, of despair that he had always known he was.

And as he melts into the darkness, she drops down into her chair to continue searching for the missing piece to rescue Harry, to help in the War that had consumed her life.


End file.
